


in somnis veritas

by brella



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: Dreamwalking, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The AV Club didn't mention to him that it was possible to cross wires with other people's dreams, but—that's happening now. Thanks, guys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in somnis veritas

**Author's Note:**

> Macey asked for Hunter, Fortunato, and melons. It evolved.

The first time it happens is when he has the flu.

“I’m really, seriously fine,” he assures the room, just before vomiting spectacularly into Ike’s wastebasket.

Casey and Jade, standing side-by-side in the doorway, exchange matching skeptical, mildly concerned looks. They’d come to walk him to Ancient Civilizations the way they do every Tuesday and Thursday, but had found cause for hesitation when they’d seen him ashen-faced and wrapped in blankets like some kind of nauseated nesting doll. Casey’s hair is in a ponytail that bounces slightly when she squares her shoulders and strides toward his bed.

“Oh, _thank_ you, Hunter,” Ike says acidly from his spot in front of the mirror, knotting his tie and sneering in Hunter’s direction. “I’d been _needing_ some fresh puke in that wastebasket; it really helps tie the contents together.”

“Sorry,” Hunter mumbles weakly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Casey has come to a stop in front of the ladder to his bed, and she’s staring critically up at him with her hands on her hips.

Hunter smiles adoringly, unable to help himself. “Heyyy.”

“You look terrible,” she tells him. Like he hadn’t already figured.

“Yeah,” he agrees solemnly, propping himself up awkwardly on his elbows and nodding at her with a grimace.

Casey lets out something sounding dangerously similar to a _tsk_ and clambers halfway up the ladder. She reaches one hand toward his forehead and rests the back of it there, and he flumps back onto his pillow at the touch.

“Your hand is so cool,” he mumbles. “Please keep it there forever.”

“Yeah, you’re basically on fire,” Casey declares matter-of-factly. “To be honest, I’m surprised you’re not on Jade’s arrest record.”

“Har, har,” Jade deadpans.

Casey’s forehead has a crease in the middle, and for a second, she turns her hand over and combs Hunter’s hair back with the tips of her fingers. “You definitely need some medicine, or something, but there is no way in _hell_ I am letting the nurse get her hands on you.”

Hunter would normally be touched by that kind of protectiveness, but instead he sits bolt upright and half-hangs off the bed again, retching into the same trash can.  

“Okay,” Casey says, unfazed, hopping down from the ladder and landing perfectly. She claps her hands together. “Ike, you don’t have class until two, right? Make sure he drinks lots of clear liquids.”

“I am _not_ playing caregiver to the interactive Petri dish,” Ike snaps. “He poses a DEFCON 2 threat to my ability to confidently keep up my routine fornication requirements. Really, Casey, you’re the one here with the legs worthy of a nurse uniform; take advantage of this. Only make sure that I am the only one who benefits.”

“You’ll do it,” Casey says sternly. She swivels eyes back up to Hunter, who’s only half-recovered, still dangling off the edge with his face in his arm. “And you. Rest. Sleep. Get a bowl up there, or something. If you need to barf on anything that’s Ike’s, at least make sure it’s his face. As far as food goes, if you get hungry at all, stick to the BRAT diet.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Hunter moans.

“Bananas, rice, applesauce, toast,” Casey lists off, holding up four fingers. “Jun or Guillaume can bring them for you from the dining hall. I’ll come by after my classes are done. If I find out you got out of bed for anything other than bathroom breaks, I will personally break your neck and not foot your funeral bill, got it?”

“I totally believe you,” Hunter says, turning so that his cheek is flat against his wrist and grinning blearily at her (or, well, at the three of her he can see, all glaring up at him with arms akimbo).

“Your bedside manner is truly inspiring, Casey; well done,” Ike comments snidely.

“We will keep an eye on him,” Guillaume promises, having just come out of the shower, tousling his damp hair to dry it.

“Thank God,” Casey mutters. “You, I trust.”

With that, she sends Hunter one last vaguely threatening look and strides back to Jade, who still hasn’t crossed the threshold and is instead concentrating on scoffing appropriately at Ike whenever he waggles his eyebrows over at her.

“Hunter,” Casey calls over her shoulder, locking eyes steadily with him when she tilts her head around, “I’m serious. Go to sleep.”

Weirdly, it happens pretty much instantaneously. He’s out – like, fully out – for a while, but when things come back into focus again, he’s in a church. Which, he notices right away, is definitely _not_ the AV Club room.

“Um,” he says. It echoes too loudly and for too long, making him jump.

He turns, craning his neck back to see dim vaulted ceilings that waver if he looks at them for too long. The light murmuring in from the stained glass windows is splayed in disordered colors on the stone floor. All of the pews are empty.

“Hello?” he yells, and promptly cringes when it reverberates back to him in sharp and thundering throbs. He whirls back around to face the chancel, which he can barely see. Darkness creeps down the corners of the ceiling and the walls in serpentine tendrils. He blinks hard to try to rid himself of it, but when it doesn’t help, he realizes he’s not the one making it happen..

“ _Hello_?” he tries again, louder.

“ _Só_ ,” a quiet, ragged voice drifts back. Hunter freezes, holding his breath to stop its steady noise and try to isolate the sound. “ _Estou só_ … _sohinzo_. _Meu Deus… por que me abandonaste? Meus olhos… meus olhos…_ ”

“Look, uh…” Hunter shouts to the empty pews, “I think I might’ve taken a wrong turn, or something? I’m sorry to interrupt, but I kind of—”

“ _Ouça meus orações_ ,” the same voice whispers. It’s starting to increase in desperation, getting louder, more stentorian. “ _Por favor, por favor, por favor, por favor_ —”

“Hey!” Hunter stiffens when his darting eyes settle on the crown of a bowed head, several rows ahead of him. Without thinking, he sprints toward it, his arms pumping with effort he knows isn’t natural.

At first, despite his motion, he doesn’t move, but he grits his teeth and reaches a hand out and suddenly he’s there, right next to a hunched-over, kneeling figure with clasped hands resting on the wooden rail of the pew in front of it. The black hairs on the head are short and thick and curly. The broad shoulders are shaking.

“ _Por favor_ ,” the voice – stuttering out from the stranger – whimpers. “ _Por favor_.”

“Listen, I’m really sorry to bother you, but I’m kind of lost and I need to know you’re not an Academy-hired dream assassin here to put me into a coma or perform evil inception or something,” Hunter says as quickly as he can, in case of any unpredictable reactions. “Do you… know English?”

There’s a long, macilent silence before the young man rasps, “Yes.”

Hunter claps his hands. “Okay, awesome. So… I’m Hunter; hi; nice to meet you. And, uh, wait, was that ‘yes’ supposed to be confirmation of your, y’know, villainy, or—”

“ _Ehyt otko ym yees eslaep plhe em_ ,” the young man whines, and Hunter is absolutely lost on that one.

“Okay, that… is definitely no language I have ever heard before,” he declares, putting up a finger for emphasis. “What is that, Yiddish?”  

The praying hands clench more tightly together, but the head does not lift to reveal a face and the body does not rise. Finally, pushed to the limit of curiosity, Hunter reaches unsurely down to brace a hand on the closest shoulder to him.

“Hey, man,” he says quietly, with genuine worry, “Are you okay?”

There’s a sigh that seems to come from the entire building. Hunter’s head jerks up – the shadows are growing, getting closer.

When he looks back down again, he lets out a yelp and recoils, stumbling back until he lands unceremoniously on the ground.

The face looking back at him has dark and empty holes where the eyes should be, but they’re seeping out black smoke like it’s oil. Tears twist in rivulets down pronounced cheekbones.

“ _Plhe em_.” The mouth that forms around the words is contorted with pain and suffering. The boy lifts two palpitating hands, both of which run red with blood.

Hunter’s fingers abruptly curl into the dirt and it strikes him, swiftly, straight in the chest, that he’s seen that face before.

“Hey, wait—wait a minute,” he splutters out. “I… I know you.” He points, but his arm shakes, and his brain scrambles in a dozen different directions, searching for something definite to latch onto. It doesn’t take long. “You’re—You’re melon guy! …You were in much better shape last time, granted, but you… you’re melon guy.” He blinks, feeling nausea descend on him. “What’d they do to you?”

That’s the only question it makes sense to ask. What _else_ could be responsible for shit like this?

Melon Guy shakes his head slowly, his eyebrows furrowing in what looks like hurt.

“That is not my name,” he croaks. “That is not my name. What is my name?”

“Your… what?” Hunter shrugs, but his heart is thudding so ferociously that it makes the motion come out shivering. “I’m… I’m really sorry; I don’t know your name.”

“Please,” Melon Guy insists, begs. He reaches uncertain hands toward Hunter’s and, after a second, clasps them, then grips them. His palms are rough like sand, and they sting Hunter’s skin. “Please… before it…”

As his voice tapers off into hopeless nothing, clarity swims and sharpens through the back of Hunter’s mind. He sits up straighter, swallowing.

“Wait, wait, I know it… I _know_ it,” he says, aggressively to himself. “For… fortune cookie? No – god _fucking_ —wait! Fortunato!” It comes out so loud, so exuberant, that it rattles into every isolated corner and cobweb and seems to still time itself. “It’s Fortunato!”

All at once, the darkness crawling down toward them halts. The fog tumbling from the eyeholes starts to thin.

“Fortunato,” Hunter repeats, in a voice soft and stunned, though he’s not sure whether it’s because he’s proud of himself or profoundly freaked out. “You’re Fortunato. You gave me a melon. From some island. Right? That was you. I kinda dropped it. Sorry. There was a – a wind thing.”

“Fortunato.” It fills the chapel in increasingly clamoring, reverent whispers. They build and build and build until the inky distortions, no longer descending, swoop back up and away, vanishing with the arrival of clear golden light, and then blue, and then green, and then white. The stained glass windows illuminate. The sound of birds and rustling trees wavers in the air outside. If Hunter concentrates, he thinks he can smell summer, somewhere far off.

When he looks back at Fortunato, he almost falls over again – two brown eyes stare back at him where the voids used to be. They’re red at the edges and glistening with tears, but they’re there.

“Thank you,” Fortunato says, a little awkwardly. He releases his grip on Hunter’s hands and Hunter bites back the urge to shake them out to reanimate his circulation, because it is definitely gone. “Hunter.”

“No problem,” Hunter replies, offering an automatic smile. “So, how long’s _that_ been going on?”

Fortunato blinks at him, clearly perplexed. In unison, the two of them clamber up to sit side-by-side on the wooden pew.

“The whole praying thing,” Hunter elaborates. “And the ensuing… forces of darkness trying to swallow you alive, or whatever the hell that was.”

Fortunato frowns slightly, his eyes wandering down to his lap in thought. He teases his thumbs against one another. Hunter waits.

“I do not know,” he answers after a while. “But I think it is over now. I had forgotten…”

“Forgotten what?” Hunter prods him when he doesn’t continue.

“Forgotten,” Fortunato continues, clearly struggling with the words, “That in the dreams, one can… I have my eyes, in dreams.”

“Do you… normally not?” Hunter asks, paling.

Fortunato shakes his head, his mouth drawing into a grim and haunted line.

“She took them from me,” he whispers. “With her own two fingers. Like this.”

He raises his hands in the air, curls his thumbs, and jabs them illustratively downwards. Hunter jolts even though nothing happens.

“Who?” he inquires, hushed.

But Fortunato shakes his head before raising his gaze up to the altar. Gold light illuminates the statue there, but Hunter can’t make out who it is.

“I cannot tell you,” Fortunato sighs.

Hunter slumps. “Can't say I haven’t heard that one before.”

After another moment of stretching silence, Fortunato whispers, grief-stricken, “I only want this all to end.”

“Howzat?” Hunter perks up, leaning closer, but Fortunato exhales heavily through his nose and straightens, closing his eyes in meditation.

Hunter watches as Fortunato folds his hands in his lap and starts to whisper what’s undoubtedly a bunch of prayers to himself in Portuguese. Figuring that he’s no longer welcome, he clears his throat awkwardly and stands, taking a step back.

“Well, uh, I guess I’ll see you around, now that you’ve got your eyes back, and stuff,” he says, performing a weird, loose salute. “I mean, maybe. No clue how this whole dream-walking thing works, but… we can split a melon next time, or something.”

Fortunato doesn’t open his eyes or unravel his fingers, but he stops murmuring for a moment. After a beat of silence, he replies, in a hesitant but genuine voice, “I… would like that.”

Hunter wakes up puking right then, but… whatever. He made a friend. Worth it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The second time it happens, he’s in Philosophy class, and when he comes to, dream-wise, he’s in a theatre, settled into a single seat dead-center in its row, of which there are hundreds more behind and in front of him.

Slowly, he sits forward, staring suspiciously around. The lighting in the place is soft and golden, given off by antiquated gas lamps along the walls and the stage in front of him. That itself has a single purple candle in the middle of it, but no illuminating spotlights. Gilded pillars and an ornate proscenium arch, adorned in morning glory flowers and reeds of bamboo (interesting combo) fill the empty spaces.

It’s nothing like the chapel – everything is lit and warm and pleasantly quiet, and the theatre is clearly ancient, but Hunter’s not an expert on artistic and architectural movements, so he really has no clue how to describe it other than “super old-looking.”  

He turns around to try to get a better look at any potential exits, but there’s a quiet padding noise from the stage that prompts him to whirl around again. Even though he’s positive there isn’t any orchestra, music drifts up from someplace indistinct, a string of lilting piano notes and wispy violins.

“Anybody there?” he calls through cupped hands.

As if in answer, right then, a figure swishes into view behind the candle, twirling delicately past. Hunter stands to try to get a better look, and it comes back again, more slowly this time – a girl, black hair pulled into a perfect bun, pirouetting effortlessly on pointed ballet shoes, the tulle of her rose tutu rustling with the motion. She’s going in unhalting circles, over and over again, the same movements, the same rhythm.

“Hey,” she chirps suddenly, and this time she catches his eye briefly before spinning away again. She flashes him a toothy grin. “What’s up?”

“I, uh,” Hunter replies intelligently.

“I thought maybe you’d be Ian,” she continues in a chatty voice like he hadn’t said anything in response. “He’s, like, _way_ overdue for a visit. He’s probably all freaked out that I hate him now, you know, for what happened, but I really don’t. Still want to punch him hard, though. It grounds him. What’s your name, guy?”

“It’s—” Hunter’s mind is still catching up to the fact that he has apparently entered another dream location that is in no way, shape, or form the AV Club room. He scratches his head. “Hunter. You?”

“You wanna know something crazy-weird?” she asks him. “I totally don’t remember. Or, well, I kind of do, sometimes, but other times I don’t.”

“That’s… not great.” He is just doling out the articulate responses lately. “You’re really good,” he comments, pointing with a vaguely gesturing arm at her. “At dancing, I mean.”

“Oh, thanks! I’ve been doing it for a really long time.” She laughs when she goes around this time. Hunter realizes that, despite her petite stature, she's got some serious arms. “You like my tutu?”

Hunter tilts his head and, when she swings by, spots an emblem in the center of the pink fabric covering her chest.

He grins.

“X-Men,” he exclaims. “Nice.”

“You got it, wow!” Akiko marvels at him. “Hey, with mad trivia skills like that, have you considered checking out the AV Club? They’re preeetty sweeeet, and Andres is probably getting all lonely now that only Hannah and Esi are around. They’re great, but also _crazy_ in love, so sometimes it’s like you’re not even there, you know?”

“I _am_ in the AV Club, actually,” Hunter tells her. He slips his hands into his pockets, scuffing his shoe against the carpet. “Recent recruit, but—”

“You are?!” Instantly, both the music and her dancing stop at once, and she springs to a halt right in front of the candle. Her beaming mouth lifts up her cheeks and makes her eyes brighten. They’re a bright and lively brown, almost gold around the middle. Hunter doesn’t usually describe girls as adorable, but this one’s definitely that. “Dude, can you do me a ginormous favor?”

“Uh…” Hunter is hesitant. He does not want to risk doing favors for potential Academy-hired dream assassins, but… she has an X-Men emblem on her tutu, so how bad can she be, right? “Sure? As long as you don’t want me to, like… kill anybody.”

She snorts loudly, stuffing the sound down with her fist and scrunched eyes. “No, stupid. Just a simple courier mission. Basic. Although if you _are_ offering your services as a hitman, I will probably file that away.”

“I’m not. At all. Even slightly.” Hunter waves his hands in denial in front of his chest, and when she rolls her eyes and shrugs in apparent acceptance, he loosens with relief. “Then yeah. Shoot.”

She abruptly goes from being up on the stage to right in front of him, grasping his face at either side for what he can only assume is supposed to be emphasis. He jumps, but she holds fast.

“Tell Ian,” she says, insistently, with fiercely sober eyes and furrowed eyebrows, “that it’s gonna be okay.”

“That’s it?” Hunter manages to get out through his squashed cheeks.

Her face relaxes then, all of her features softening into a mischievous smile altogether reminiscent of an especially smug fox.

“Yep!” she sings, patting his cheeks. “Thanks for doing me a solid. You’re the best, Hunter. Might wanna wake up, though, your professor just called on you.”

“What, huh?” Hunter blurts out, horror-stricken, before the proscenium arch sharpens into a blackboard in front of which a very irate-looking Professor Meylikhov is standing.

“I asked you to give us an example of how _Slaughterhouse-Five_ examines the philosophical aspects of war,” Professor Meylikhov repeats tetchily. “‘What, huh’ is not an acceptable answer, but I can’t fault you for trying.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The third time, he goes from dozing off on a central quad bench to lying spread-eagled in snow, and he is getting really, _really_ tired of this.

Giving a long-suffering sigh, he flattens his palms on the ground and pushes himself up to his feet. The snow feels fresh, but nowhere near as cold as it should. When he settles into balance, he gets to work on shaking the now-melting clumps off of his hands and clothes. He bows his head, swatting the excess from the back of his pants.

“Okay, so…” he opens to whoever’s inevitably going to be there, still not looking up, “I’m _really_ not in the mood for this right now, so…”

“Casey!” a man’s laughing voice calls. Hunter freezes instantly, round-eyed. “I thought I told you to take care of the snow in the driveway! Some homeless teenager slept in it!”

“ _Aaaah_!” Hunter leaps back, wheeling frantically around, to see a two-story suburban house, in front of which a dryly smiling blond man in sweatpants and a parka and laughter lines is standing, staring straight at him.

“Morning,” the man says cheerfully.

“ _Aaaah_!” Hunter repeats, at a loss for any adequate words to express his sudden state of severe panic. “ _Aaaaaaaah_!”

“Yeah, sure, Dad,” and oh, no, _that_ voice he definitely recognizes, _what does he do_ , “I’ll be right out; just let me find my…”

“You’re here for Casey, right?” her _dad_ inquires in a conspiratorial voice and a knowing smirk, leaning in slightly. “From Toronto?”

“Um, uh,” Hunter replies.

“We’ve heard so much about you,” her dad chuckles. “She’ll be surprised you made it.”

He winks.

Hunter has no idea what _that’s_ supposed to mean, so he settles for standing there and panicking some more.

From inside the house, Casey’s voice swells out into the wintry morning again. Hunter can hear footsteps approaching the front door – red, with a fan window at the top – and is pretty sure that his heart and stomach aggressively wrestle and start to combine when the knob turns.

“Seriously, if you’re mad I forgot to shovel, you don’t need to make up some—”

The door swings open. Blonde hair catches the pale sunlight. As usual, the second he sees her, Hunter promptly forgets to be scared (forgets to do _anything_ except look at her).

She makes it two steps out onto the porch before her (exceptionally vibrant, for some reason) blue eyes swing up from her feet and land on him, before the free and everyday smile on her face is effectively slapped away. She’s halfway through tugging on her left snow boot, and her hair is wild and uncombed (still sleep-rumpled) and there’s the red imprint of a wrinkled pillowcase on her cheek.

She does not look especially happy to see him. The ensuing second of silence is fraught with traction.

“ _Hunter_?” she finally blurts out, somewhere between incredulous and dumbstruck.

Hunter lifts his hand awkwardly and wiggles it in a tiny wave, pulling up his most lopsided, apologetic smile.

“Hey,” he squeaks.

Casey’s mouth tightens, and her whole posture along with it.

“How did you get here?” she demands sharply, striding down the last of the stairs and advancing on him in swift, threatening stomps. Unable to help himself, Hunter stumbles back slightly, but she apparently isn’t as intent on trampling him as she seems, because she stops about two feet in front of him with her hands on her hips and her eyes ablaze under a glower.

If Hunter were Ike, he’d shoot back some lascivious reply about how he has no control over Casey’s subconscious desires, how it’s _her_ dream, and he’s only here because she evidently _wants_ him to be, but Hunter is not Ike (a fact he silently thanks the universe for every single chance he gets), so instead, he settles for sputtering, “Apparently I can kind of cross wires with other people’s dreams and help them work out whatever unconscious problems they’re having, uh, think _Inception_ except I’m not—”

Casey thrashes her hands wordlessly and her face scrunches up in frustration. Hunter clamps his mouth shut.

“This isn’t—” She’s struggling with the words. Tensely, she pinches the bridge of her nose and lets out a huff of air that clouds. “You’re not supposed…”

When she trails off, Hunter cautiously presses, “Not supposed to what?”

Casey lowers her hands and slips them around her arms, hunching over like his question had physically struck her. Her eyes dart down and her eyebrows worry against each other and Hunter is pretty sure he hasn’t felt this guilty in a while.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she mutters, clenching her jaw. “To see this.”

Hunter blinks, and then, without thinking, lets out a puzzled laugh.

“Why not?” He shrugs. “It’s just your house. And your dad.”

“My mom’s inside.” Casey swallows. Hunter only then notices that her voice is, just barely, wobbling. “She’s making blueberry pancakes. It’s Saturday.”

That’s when he gets it.

“Wait, so…” The snow seems to take on a sudden vividness of life, and a chill hits him square in the back, and he can hear a song playing indistinctly from the house’s upstairs window, and he can smell woodsmoke from the chimney. “This… This isn’t a dream. This is a memory.”

Slowly, Casey nods.

“Totally against the rules, _Inception_ -wise; I know,” she jokes halfheartedly, and Hunter is so ridiculously in love with her; it’s pathetic.

“Nah, I get it,” he assures her in lieu of the impulsive admirations lingering on his tongue. “You gotta see them somehow, right?”

It suddenly feels colder. Casey’s face tightens along with the air for a fraction of a second.

“Yeah.” The word is stiff, an uppercut to the sky. After it, there’s a taut silence that Hunter has absolutely no desire to try touching.

“You said you can’t leave until you, what…” Casey gestures, trying to pull the word from the air beside her. “Fix my problems?”

“Well… maybe?” Hunter scratches at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I’m not really sure. Both times before this, yeah, there was some _issue_ going down, and I helped, and then… ta-da.” He shakes his head in defeat. “I really don’t know; I’m just rolling with it.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then, to Hunter’s astonishment, Casey releases a wispy trail of laughter that takes away a little bit of the cold.

“Definitely one of your best skills,” she teases him.

He’d never even thought of how nice it would feel, being teased by her. Nevertheless, he feels his ears start to heat up and dips his head down swiftly to hide the flushing of his cheeks. Casey lets out another minute, humming, throat-softened giggle.

“Your dad won’t stop staring at me,” Hunter whispers when he looks up again, glancing furtively at Mr. Blevins, who’s still in the driveway.

Casey follows his line of sight, tilting her head over her shoulder. She shrugs, turning back to Hunter and stuffing her hands into her pockets.

“So?”

“So,” Hunter elaborates, “I’m kind of afraid he might kill me. Don’t get me wrong, he seems really nice, but… _Dad_. And he knows I’m from Toronto.”

Immediately, Casey’s face pulls itself into another deep frown. Offhandedly, Hunter thinks to himself that he sees her with too many of those.

“You _talked_ to him?” she barks, and Hunter straightens instinctively.

“Well—yeah,” he flummoxes. “Kinda. He was definitely bordering on the cryptic, though; I have no clue what he was talking about.”

“And he knew you’re from Toronto?” Casey shakes her head skeptically. “I didn’t even know _I_ knew that.”

“And… you knowing that would make a difference, how? You met me _after_ you got to the school. Y’know, the school that doesn’t allow any contact whatsoever with the outside world. And possibly erases your parents’ memories of your existence. So…”

“Well, it’s like _Inception_ , right?” Casey postulates, shrugging. “He’s not my _actual_ dad; he’s just an extension of my subconscious, and since I apparently remember you’re from Toronto, so does he. He says the things I'm not consciously thinking. Right?”

Hunter wonders what context would demand her subconscious to _hear so much about him_ , as it were, but then again, it’s probably happened at least twice that Casey has had some banal thoughts about how annoying and ridiculous he is, so maybe that explains it.  

“I guess,” he agrees, but Casey narrows her eyes at him. Hunter is instantly reminded of the fact that hiding things from her is impossible.

“Hun- _ter_ ,” she tells him warningly, in a _you’ll talk or I’ll break your nose_ sort of way.

“So this is your house, huh?” he says loudly, pointing.

Casey’s scowl transforms into a scathing roll of her eyes, but she pivots to face the house anyway. The longer she stares up at it, the more she starts to soften at every edge. She combs some of her hair back with her fingers, breathing ruefully.

“Yep,” she half-whispers. “Chicago. It’s where I grew up.”

“I didn’t know it snowed in the U.S.,” Hunter says conversationally, and when Casey gives him an amused look, he appends, “Well, except in Wisconsin and New York City and stuff. And the place where _Fargo_ was.”

“Fargo,” Casey tells him flatly. “Fargo, North Dakota.”

“There’s a South Dakota, right? I mean, logically, there would have to be, but you guys don’t have free health care, so…”

“Of course there’s a South Dakota.” Casey wrinkles her nose over the smile she’s clearly trying to hide. “Is Canada really this bad about teaching geography, or did you just fail it?”

“Hey, I’m good at geography!” Hunter protests.

Casey gives him a deadpan look. “Name one country that directly borders Russia.”

Hunter’s brain fumbles. “Uh…” He snaps his fingers. “Ukraine!”

He should probably be at least a little offended by how totally shocked Casey looks that he actually got it right, but he isn’t.

“Not bad,” she concedes. “And why do you know Ukraine, exactly?”

“Um,” Hunter says. “It snows a lot in Toronto.”

Casey snorts quietly at his glaringly obvious avoidance tactic, but lets it go. “Y’know, I’m kind of a hypocrite. I have no idea what Canada’s layout is like except that you’ve got provinces, and they’re really big. Which is weird, because Canada is one of the least-populated countries in the world.”

“Well, I’ll have to show you around sometime,” Hunter says without thinking. “Toronto, anyway. I haven’t really been anywhere else. But I promise it’s really cool.”

“That’d be fun.” Maybe it’s because she’s dreaming, but she actually sounds like she means it.

“We could trade,” Hunter continues in a babbling voice. “Like, you could show me Chicago; I’ve heard it’s cool. I promise I wouldn’t make your parents hate me; everybody’s parents like me.”

“Stop.”

Hunter starts slightly, throat closing. Casey’s head is bowed and her shoulders are hunched closer in, and her hair is obscuring her face. A sickening, lurching feeling descends on Hunter in an instant – that he’s said something irreparably wrong.

“You’re never going to meet my parents, okay?” she snaps. Her voice is cracking down the middle.

“Casey, I’m…” _Sorry_ lingers in his mouth, but he can’t jumpstart it into moving.

“Go home,” she tells him, colder than the air around them. “Or wake up. Or whatever it is you do. Just…”

“I don’t—”

“Just leave,” she shouts. When she whirls on him, her face is streaked in tears and the sight takes Hunter back to an unfamiliar doorway, to a string of useless stuttering and a rising lump in his throat, to a framed photograph that she hadn’t let go of, and when he understands it, or thinks he does, unspeakable apologies start to clamor in his chest.

“Oh – oh, oh my God, Casey, I’m so sorry—”

He jolts awake still speaking, still repeating the words, to see that the quad is empty, and that the sky overhead is dim with settling evening. When he sits up, he can see the apple tree on the opposite side of the lawn, and, not knowing what else to do, he slumps forward and fists his hands in his hair and curses at the ground until he can’t understand what he’s saying anymore.

He’s not so sure he fixed things that time. He feels like he just made them worse. Casey doesn’t look him in the eye for a week and he knows he deserves it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It stops happening after that, or, when it does, it’s rare and sparse and he only really loiters for a blink of time before waking up again in a sweat, feeling sick and self-deprecating, like he’s just stepped on something sacred and private.

He sees glimpses, though. Jade’s dreams are on fire sometimes, and when they’re not, they’re on an infinite soccer field, full of promise and optimism that can’t possibly last. He trips into one of Ike’s, once, a nightmare about snakes, and a dead body on the floor that won’t stop bleeding out, and he’s not as abrasive to Ike after that. Weirdly, Jade always shows up in those, setting the darkness ablaze until it’s not there anymore, and suddenly Hunter gets why she puts so much effort into acting like she hates Ike.

In another, for someone he doesn’t think he knows, there’s somebody called Brendan, Brendan who’s safe, Brendan who’s fine, like those are the most important things in the world for Brendan to be. Jun dreams about Hisao, and so does Guillaume, and Hunter wakes up crying once from one of those, wiping off the tears and snot with his sleeve, because he knows he could talk to Hisao about this stuff, but Hisao isn’t here, and Hunter’s sick of people not being here, but what right does somebody like Hunter have to miss Hisao when Hisao’s twin brother and the love of Hisao’s life are sharing a room with him?

He sees Irina, once. He’s not sure what’s going on – it’s a patched-together canvas of chaos and tragedy and death and all kinds of other Irina things. She lunges at him, screaming wildly like an animal, and stabs him in the throat, and he surges off the bed with a hand over his neck and has to spend ten minutes slowing his breathing and convincing himself that the wound won’t be there if he lets go.

One time, he’s not sure if it’s his dream that Casey got into or vice-versa, but it’s snowing again and he asks her if he can kiss her because he knows neither of them will remember it (nobody ever remembers dreams) and now he can’t remember if she said yes or not.

Months later, while he’s sleeping on the floor of a solitary confinement cell, dirt-caked and shuddering, the dark spaces behind his eyelids form into a chapel again. Sunlight tumbles into it, and summer quavers against the window panes.

He looks up from his hands (clean, free of cuts and scratches and torn-down fingernails) to see Fortunato in front of him, holding two slices of watermelon.

“It has been a long time,” he says, sounding a little hesitant, like he’s not sure if Hunter will remember.

But Hunter does.

“Yeah, man,” he mutters, smiling the way he hasn’t in ages, cautiously taking the piece Fortunato has extended to him. “Long time.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
